Quick recap: A poet is somehow responsible for two leaders getting elected but he really sucks at choosing anyone decent.

MRW the movie is over

Fun (?) fact: I spent the entirety of the film confused why Brazil was called Eldorado. Come to find out, this movie is a thinly veiled story about a real political mess and about the only thing that was changed were names. In other words, Eldorado is fake.

Thoughts and Observations:

I’m not going to pretend I understood a fraction of this movie. Even at the end I couldn’t tell you if anyone was ‘good’ or had the best intentions because everyone seemed to suck. The main character is Paulo Martins, a jaded journalist who somehow has a lot of influence. At first he supports the candidate that says he is for the people- that is until the people protest and many are killed. Oops! So Martins does a bunch of stuff that I don’t understand and somehow the conservative elite jerk wins the election and that’s somehow even worse than the previous guy who killed all those people.

Now, if I was Brazilian I might have related more to this movie but since I had no context for the time period, it was so hard to keep up with what was going on. I couldn’t even nail who Martins was sleeping with (turns out he shared a girl with another corrupt guy). I suppose the lesson is that in politics everyone sucks and is not to be trusted. And maybe it’s best to just stay out of the race altogether. But what I took from it is that, as always, it is the people that get screwed over in the end and they should be the ones to hold all the power.

Stylistically, this movie looked more like a French avant-garde film than political thriller. There are straightforward scenes cut with a couple dancing and breaking glass and long shots of a man twirling around with a gun. I’m sure it was all symbolism but as referenced above, I couldn’t even figure out that Eldorado wasn’t real so I don’t know how the director expected me to understand the point of the guy dragging around a black flag and a cross.

Watchability score: 2/5, only because it’s a pretty film

Up next: Naked Gun